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[Rands]

http://www.betanews.com/article/Death_Knell_Sounds_for_Nullsoft_Winamp/1100111204

It's got a bit of doom-mongering in it but, based on how other pieces of software have assumed similar fates, it's not that unlikely.

[TimB]

If you owned Winamp what would y'all do, assuming you needed to make money to support its development?

-=Tim=-

[JimH]

Charge users 10 cents per event for using profane language on the Winamp forum.

[KingSparta]

I never liked Winamp, i thought it was crap from Day one, No big loss

AOL wasted there money in more than one way, this was just another example.

[Michael Horton]

I never liked Winamp, i thought it was crap from Day one, No big loss

I agree 100%

[DougHamm]

We should all be plugging MC!  Responses to the article include comments like, "With foobar2k slowing development, all we're left with is WMP10."  Like hell!  

[TimB]

I never liked Winamp, i thought it was crap from Day one, No big loss

AOL wasted there money in more than one way, this was just another example.

I worked for AOL at the time, not in any connection with Winamp or their acquisition.  I believe the underlying thought was that making money wasn't the issue, the stock price was and maybe advertising would kick in.  We were never good at integrating acquisitions, I can't think of one good one (tho' there surely have to be one or two.)

Business plans were irrelevant, I remember hearing about people whose names are pretty public rejecting business deals 'cos companies had "wasted time" with business plans.

Strange days indeed!

-=Tim=-

[hit_ny]

Dunno bout u lot. But i loved winamp2.91.

Justin Frankel left AOL before winamp3 started, his stock options having vested and him 70mill better off..not bad for a program that plays music.

It was light, easy to use, quite tolerant of badly encoded files and amongst the first to offer support for cue files. Well it didnt but it supported a huge eco-system of plugins.

I did not like v3 and have not even bothered to look at v5.

Of course these were the days when my collection was under 100GB. I found after that it got harder to keep track of stuff which is where a media manager like MC comes in.

FB2k is not bad for what it does. Its harder to pick up and has its own quirks. Its very minimalist and appeals to those with a technical bent. The learning curve is a bit steeper than with MC.

I would say FB2K picked up steam after winamp3 came out, cos ppl wanted options that Winamp was never going to address as they did not fall into their demographic for it.

[JaredH]

Winamp always remninded me of a cheap dime store boombox. You know, those ones that always tried to make some really "cool" design to hide the fact that it was still just a dime store boom box?I dont know why, but that was always the picture I got when I thought about it. The ONLY thing I ever thought Winamp had going for it were it vizualizations. Which is actually kind of strange, because I never use them..

[LonWar]

I really liked 5, However before I discovered 5, JRiver came out with the Panes in 9.1 and I immediately bought it.

WinAmp isn't bad, But MC is a billion times better.

[geekbeats2]

first of all i dont think i could classify winamp and jriver in the same category, simply because they do very different things.

i love media center, but winamp owns as far as simply playing music goes. its probably the greatest media player ever made for computer. the community rocks, the development on it is unmatched, i mean just look at the amount and quality of skins available for it, there isnt a plug-in that hasnt been made for winamp.  i hope they stay alive! i was sure aol was gonna ruin what they had going but surprisingly they didnt change alot as far as the core of the player goes.

[Stupid User]

What?  Winamp and MC are in the same category.  Winamp (at least the more-loaded versions) has its library browser, which is a lame attempt at media file organization.  MC of course has a library.  Winamp plays audio and video files.  MC plays audio and video files.  Winamp has visualizations and plugins.  MC has visualizations and plugins.  Winamp burns and rips (again, the Pro version).  MC burns and rips.  And on and on.

I don't hate Winamp, but I sure don't love it, either.  I think that as a player, MC crushes it like a grape.  The main reason I say this is that MC's organizational features are better.  You can't play music if you can't find it.

[PeterS]

MC fans,

Feel free to plug MC anytime you see media player related news like this. It really does help us get the word out to people who care about this type of software. I quite like Winamp myself, but it doesn't do everything I need.  They do excel at Skinning with some very creative and polished offerings from users.

PeterS

[escaflo]

For what its worth, this is what I feel about Winamp.

Winamp is what I feel actually started the digital media revolution in the past.  Without Winamp, I seriously doubt MP3 would be so successful in becoming the compression format for music. What Winamp does is allow our underpowered computer in the Pentium era to be able to play compressed music with what is minimal specification. Of course, when it first started out, it wasn't exactly a resource saver also. But it manage to evolve and stay with the times, cutting down on the resource it needs to decompress a MP3 file and playing it back with each version update, and also at the same time, keeping its interface minimal, making it as user friendly as possible. This allows it to be very popular and helps kick start the digital media revolution.

Winamp 3 was undoubtly a piece of sh*t that is unstable, resource hogging and very very bloated. But from what I can see from Winamp 5 (which was Justin Frankel last project before he left the company) is that they manage to shed most of the problem that was with Winamp 3 and still manage to incorporate more features into it. Even though Winamp 5 is not a very power media player, but I would still recommend it to many novice user in computer as it can be very very easy to use. I know that MC can also be easy to use, but after trying to teach my sister how to use MC for a few times, I find that MC learning curve is still quite high (which is altogether another topic).

I would be sad to see Winamp (Nullsoft for this matter) die out as they produce some of the best software around like NSIS and Winamp.

Just my 2 cents in the middle of the night......

[datdude]

We should all be plugging MC!  Responses to the article include comments like, "With foobar2k slowing development, all we're left with is WMP10."  Like hell!  

Yes but WMP10 is free, Media Center clearly is not!  It is worth the price however there should be a free stripped down version that is also easier to use.  Once people figure it out, most would probably purchase and even if not, other services that MC offers such as online music browsing could still be available to allow a large user base and potentially more profit on those online services.

[Jakester]

I would hate to see Winamp go.  I use to listen to streaming music.  MC manages my home library, where I care about quality - secure ripping and ASIO playback.  But, let's face it, listening to streaming music via MC is like a trip to the dentist.  At least with V10 anyway.  Is V11 any better?

[Michael Horton]

But, let's face it, listening to streaming music via MC is like a trip to the dentist.

I use MC for all my (probably fairly limited relative to you all) streaming needs.

I haven't had any experience with it worth complaining about. It's gone quite smoothly.

Come to think of it, same is true for all my dental trips the past couple of decades.

I have a great dentist--I highly recommend him.

[Jakester]

Wow - I wish my experience with streaming music and MC was like that.  I don't remember the error I kept getting anymore, but only every 3rd attempt or so would connect.  And some of my favorites (Radio Paradise) would never connect.  I admit I did not attempt much debugging.  Winamp has a nice Media Library interface that automatically pulls up the top 500 streams, which provides all the choices I need.  Maybe I'll have to give MC another try with streams.  mhorton - are you using V10?

And, come to think of it, my trips to the dentist have been pretty O.K. too.  Still not at the top of my list of things to do!  (I really hate that part, after they clean your teeth, when they then floss your teeth.  Some dental assistants are gentle, but some really snap that floss down into your gums.  Ouch!)

[IanG]

And some of my favorites (Radio Paradise) would never connect.

Great station! If MC's set up as the default app for MP3s, open an MP3 link from the RP web site - you'll then get RP showing in "Playing Now".  Drag this into an empty playlist and you can play RP by clicking the playlist.

Ian G.

[Jakester]

Ian -

Thanks!  I still have Winamp as the default (for the moment) but I used the 'Open URL ..." command to set up a couple of stations in a playlist group called "Radio Stations".   By sending the entire playlist to Playing Now I can simply click around inside Playing Now to select stations.  And I used the "Artist" field to type in the name of the station.  Works great!  Maybe I'll be able to drop Winamp soon.